Old Crow Part 55

"Not lately," he said, fitting the key in the lock. "She had rather a quiet time of it while he was lame."

They went in and Nan kept on her coat while he lighted the fire and piled on brush.

"Rookie," she said, when he had it leaping, "it's an awful state of things. The man's insane."

"No," said Raven, "I don't feel altogether sure of that. We're too ready to call a man insane, now there's the fas.h.i.+on of keeping tabs. Look at me. I do something outside the ordinary--I kick over the traces--and Milly says I'm to go to the Psychopathic. d.i.c.k more than half thinks so, too. Perhaps I ought. Perhaps most of us ought. We deflect just enough from what the majority are thinking and doing to warrant them in shutting us up. No, I don't believe you could call him insane."

They talked it out from all quarters of argument. Nan proposed emergency activities and Raven supplied the counter reason, always, he owned, going back to Tira's obstinacy. Nan was game to kidnap the child, even from Tira's arms. Couldn't be done, Raven told her. Not longer ago than yesterday, Tira would have consented, but now, he reminded her, Tenney's crazy mind was on him. Yes, it was a crazy mind, he owned, but Tenney was not on that account to be p.r.o.nounced insane. He couldn't be shut up, at least without Tira's concurrence. And she never would concur. She had, if you could put it so, an insane determination equal in measure to Tenney's insane distrust, to keep the letter of her word. Then, Nan argued, Tira and the child together must go back with her. To Tenney, used only to the remote reaches of his home, the labyrinth of city life was impenetrable. He couldn't possibly find them. He wouldn't be reasonable enough, intelligent enough, to take even the first step. And Raven could stay here and fight out the battle. Tenney wouldn't do anything dramatically silly. Tira was "'way off" in fearing that. He would only fix Raven with those unpleasant eyes and ask if he were saved. Very well, Raven agreed. It was worth trying. They must catch the first chance of seeing Tira alone.

Then, though his mind was on Tira, it reverted to Anne. Again she seemed to be inexorably beside him, reminding him, with that delicate touch of her invisible finger, that he was not thinking of her, not even putting his attention uninterruptedly on what she had bidden him do: her last request, he seemed to hear her remonstrating, half sighing it to herself, as if it were only one more of the denials life had made her.

Even if he did not agree with her, in his way of taking things (throwing away his strength, persuading young men to throw away theirs, that the limited barbarism called love of country might be served) could he not act for her, in fulfilling her rarer virtue of universal love?

"I tell you what, Nan," he said, with a leap from Tira to the woman more potent now in her unseen might than she had ever been when her subtle ways of mastery had been in action before him, "it's an impossible situation."

How did she know he was talking, not of Tira but of Anne? Yet she did know. There had been a moment's pause and perhaps her mind leaped with his.

It was, she agreed, impossible. Yet, after all, so many things weren't, that looked so at the start. Think of surgery: the way they'd both seen men made over. Well! He didn't remind her that they had also seen a mountain of men, if fate had piled their bodies as high as it was piling the fame of their endeavor, who couldn't be made over.

"If we refuse her," he said--and though Nan was determined he should make his decision alone, she loved him for the coupling of their intent--"we seem to repudiate her. And that's perfectly devilish, with her where she is."

It was devilish, Nan agreed. Her part here seemed to be acquiescence in his att.i.tude of mind, going step by step with him as he broke his path.

"And," said Raven, lapsing into a confidence he had not meant to make--for would Anne in her jealous possessiveness, allow him to share one intimate thought about her, especially with Nan?--"the strange part of it is, I do seem to feel she's somewhere. I seem to feel she's here.

Reminding me, you know, just as a person can by looking at you, though he doesn't say a word. Have you felt that? Do you now?"

"No," said Nan, with her uncalculated decisiveness that made you sure she was not merely speaking the truth as she saw it, but that she did see it clearly. "I have felt it, though, about other people. About two or three of the boys over there, you know. They were the ones I knew rather well. And Old Crow! up here, Rookie, alone with you, I have that sense of Old Crow's being alive, very much alive. Is it the thoughts he's left behind him, written on the air, or is it really Old Crow?"

"The air's been changed a good many times since he was here," said Raven lightly. It was not good for little girls to be wrestling forever with things formless and dark.

"Oh," said she, "but there's something left. Our minds make pictures.

They don't get rubbed out. Why, I can see old Billy Jones sitting here and Old Crow bandaging his legs, and your mother and little Jack coming up to bring things in a basket. You can say that's because Old Crow told it so vividly I can't get it out of my mind. But that isn't all. Things don't get rubbed out."

x.x.xV

The next day Raven saw Tenney driving by, probably to the street where all the neighbors went for supplies. Up to this time Jerry had offered, whenever he was going, to do Tira's "arrants," and Tenney had even allowed him to bring home grain. Raven at once summoned Nan. It was their chance. Tira must be taken by storm. Let her leave the house as it was and run away. Nan hurried on her things, and they went up the road.

"There she is," said Nan, "at the window."

Raven, too, saw her white face for the moment before it disappeared. She was coming, he thought, making haste to let them in. He knocked and waited. No one came. He knocked again, sharply, with his stick, and then, in the after silence, held his breath to listen. It seemed to him he had never heard a house so still. That was the way his mind absurdly put it: actively, ominously still.

"She was at the window," said Nan, in a tone that sounded to him as apprehensive as the beating of his own heart. "I saw her."

He knocked again and, after another interval, the window opened above their heads and Tira leaned over the sill.

"You go away," she said quietly, yet with a thrilling apprehension. "I can't let you in."

They stepped back from the door and looked up at her. She seemed even thinner than when Nan had seen her last, and to Raven all the sorrows of woman were darkling in the anguish of her eyes. He spoke quietly, making his voice rea.s.suring to her.

"Why can't you? Have you been told not to?"

"No," said Tira, quick, he thought, to s.h.i.+eld her persecutor, "n.o.body's said a word. But they've gone off, an' you can't be certain when they'll be back."

"Hasn't he gone to the street?" Raven asked her, and now her voice, in its imploring hurry, could not urge him earnestly enough.

"He said he was goin'. You can't tell. He may turn round an' come back.

An' I wouldn't have you here--either o' you--for anything in this world."

But though she said "either of you," her eyes were on Raven, beseeching him to go. He did not answer that. In a few words he set forth their plan. She was to take the child and come. It was to be now. But she would hardly listen.

"No," she called, in any pause between his words. "No! no! no!"

"Don't you want to save the child?" Raven asked her sternly. "Have you forgotten what may happen to him?"

She had her answer ready.

"It's his," she said. "He spoke the truth, though it wa'n't as he mean it. But the baby's his, an' baby as he is, an' _as_ he is, he's got to fight it out along o' me. You go now, an' don't you come a-nigh me ag'in. An' if you stay here knockin' at my door, I'll scream so's I sha'n't hear you."

She withdrew her head from the window, but instantly looked out again.

"G.o.d Almighty bless you!" she said. "But you go! you go!"

"Tira!" called Raven sharply, "don't you know you're in danger? Don't you know if anything happens to you it'll----" He paused, and Nan wondered if he meant to say, "It will break my heart!" and scarcely felt the pain of it, she was so tense with misery for them both.

Tira leaned out again and seemed to bend even protectingly toward them.

She smiled at them, and the softening of her face was exquisite.

"I ain't in danger," she said. "I've said things to him. He's afraid."

"Threatened him?" Raven asked.

"I've kep' tellin' him," said Tira, in that same tone of tender reasonableness such as mothers use when they persuade children to the necessities of things, "he must remember we ain't alone. An' somehow it seems to scare him. He don't see Him as I do: the Lord Jesus Christ."

She shut the window quietly, and Raven and Nan went away. They walked soberly home without a word, but when Nan was taking off her hat she heard bells and went to the library window. Raven was standing by the table, trying to find some occupation to steady his anxious mind.

"Look!" said Nan.

It was Tenney, and he was "whipping up."

"She knew, didn't she?" commented Nan, and he answered:

"Yes, she knew."

Here his trouble of mind broke forth. He had to be enlightened. A woman must guess what a woman thought.